Sinn Féin - On Your Side

Sinn Féin Senator Paul Gavan has called for the end to precarious employment

Sinn Féin’s Seanad spokesperson on Workers’ Rights Paul Gavan has called for the end to precarious employment.

Senator Gavan was speaking at the launch of TASC’s ‘Precarious work, precarious lives’ report, and called on the Irish Left to work together to implement key workers’ rights proposals in the report.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Senator Gavan said:

“The policy recommendations contained in this report offer a blueprint for a radical programme for a government of the Left.

“If we are serious about dealing with inequality, we must deal with workers’ rights.

“We must introduce a Living Wage of €11.90 as the minimum wage. We must ban if-and-when contracts.

"We must abolish bogus-self-employment. We must empower trade unions through collective bargaining.

“If we do not deal with precarious employment, we will not be able to deal with our housing, childcare or health crisis. We need to raise the floor of our economy and of our society.

“The report published by TASC is a comprehensive examination of how poor employment practices, low wages and insecure work can have significant knock-on effects for all other aspects of our society.

“Workers can’t plan to have children because they don’t know how many hours of work or what wages they will receive next week, let alone next year.

"Families can’t get a mortgage because the bank tells them they aren’t guaranteed any hours next week.

"Workers can’t even make plans to see their friends or family because they are at the beck and call of their employer.

“Employers have too much power and we need to address this imbalance. It is outrageous that workers in precarious employment are effectively controlled by their employer not just within their workplace, but also outside of work.

“We need to acknowledge the great work of SIPTU in the Childcare sector, of Mandate in Retail, of Unite in the English Language Sector, and of political parties on the left– and we need to work together, collectively, to implement a workers’ rights based agenda across our 32 counties.”